In an unexpected twist that has somewhat broken the internet, a team of more than 40 specialists believes it has identified the Zodiac Killer, the notorious serial murderer who operated in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s. The Zodiac Killer has been connected to five murders between 1968 and 1969. He became famous (or notorious) for taunting authorities through complex riddles and ciphers sent to media and police during the investigations.
The Case Breakers, which consist of former law enforcement investigators, journalists, and military intelligence officers, said in a press release that the team believes it has identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. The Case Breakers say they identified Poste as the killer after uncovering forensic evidence and photos from Poste's darkroom. The team said a few images featured in the press release show scars on his forehead that match scars on a sketch of the Zodiac Killer.
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The Case Breakers also believe that Poste is responsible for the murder of 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates, who was found dead in an alleyway in Riverside, California, two years before what is believed to be the first Zodiac killing.
According to an expert on the infamous serial killer, however, the Zodiac Killer remains as elusive as he did back in the day. Tom Voigt, the operator of ZodiacKiller.com and author of ‘Zodiac Killer: Just the Facts’, says the news of the ID itself was “completely bogus” and “hot garbage”.
“Yeah, I’ve got about a million people on my website right now. It’s all bulls**t, by the way, just to get that out of the way. This is hot garbage. I don’t know why it got any coverage at all. It was basically a press release,” he told Rolling Stone. “First of all, the funny thing is, I’ve never heard of any of these people that are these so-called experts. I have been doing this for 25 years and I’ve never heard of any of them. So that there are some red flags right off the bat. And then the funny thing is, they’re matching up lines on foreheads. No witness ever described lines on Zodiac’s forehead. Those lines were simply added by the sketch artist to fill in the sketch. The amended sketch, which is supposed to look more like Zodiac, according to witnesses, doesn’t really even have any lines.”
“From what I’ve read, they’ve gotten their Zodiac information from the comments section at Facebook. They’d skip the main article and they went right to the comments and they think they know everything about this. Maybe they saw the Fincher movie, but probably not. Or, they turned it off after the two-hour mark or so,” he added.
Who is Gary Francis Poste’s wife?
As per a report in The Sun, Poste pushed his wife down the stairs of their home before being jailed for the savage attack. Poste was eventually locked up in a California mental facility over the incident.
The tabloid reported that he pushed his wife Mary down the stairs of their Groveland home in California back on February 22, 2016. He was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial and was referred to a California state hospital before apparently being placed under a mental health conservatorship. Mary was 74 at the time of the attack, according to the court documents.
Poste was arrested and then charged two days later with one count of corporal injury to a spouse and another of elder or dependent adult abuse over the domestic violence incident. A criminal complaint filed at the Superior Court in Tuolumne County states that Poste “did wilfully and unlawfully inflict a corporal injury resulting in a traumatic condition upon Mary Poste, who is the spouse of the defendant”.
The complaint further alleges that Poste “did, under circumstances and conditions likely to produce great bodily harm and death, knowingly and wilfully cause and permit Mary Poste, an elder and dependant adult, to suffer, and inflicted thereon, unjustifiable physical pain”. It reportedly adds that “having the care and custody of said victim, (he) wilfully caused and permitted Mary Poste to be placed in a situation in which her health was endangered” and that she suffered “great bodily injury”.
Before dying on August 23, 2018, Poste had been staying at a live-in facility in Stockton. According to a death certificate obtained by TMZ, Poste died from vascular dementia, sepsis, septic shock, and dysphagia. The certificate also reportedly noted that Poste was suffering from osteoporosis, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, and hypothyroidism at the time of his death.
A California woman who lived next door to Poste and his wife, and who had been babysat by the couple as a child in the 1970s and '80s, said that she now believes her neighbor was the Zodiac Killer. The woman, who has been identified as Gwen, claimed that Poste taught her how to shoot, sometimes going into the woods for target practice five days a week.
“In the last year of her childcare, [Gwen] witnessed his callousness and violence towards his wife — a wife that only slept on a couch,” according to the Case Breakers. The Daily Mail reported that in a recent phone conversation between Gwen and Mary, who is now residing in an assisted living facility, the elderly woman was said to have told her former neighbor: “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell the cops about his past.”
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